A distressing
overview of the consequences of our addiction to fast fashion, “The
True Cost” might suggest another exposé of corporate greed versus
environmental well-being. That is certainly in evidence, but under
the gentle, humane investigations of its director, Andrew Morgan,
what emerges most strongly is a portrait of exploitation that ought
to make us more nauseated than elated over those $20 jeans.

To learn who is
paying for our bargains, Mr. Morgan dives to the bottom of the supply
chain, to the garment factories of Cambodia and Bangladesh and the
cotton fields of India, where he links ecological and health
calamities to zealous pesticide use. Garment workers subsisting on
less than $3 a day recount beatings by bosses who resent unionization
and requests for higher wages. At the same time, a factory owner in
Bangladesh — where the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza building
caused more than 1,000 deaths — tells us candidly that when
retailers squeeze him, he must squeeze his employees.

“There are a lot
of worse things they could be doing,” a former sourcing manager for
the fashion brand Joe Fresh says about these unfortunates, echoing an
all-too-familiar justification. A visit to Haiti, however, where
millions of tons of our castoff clothing have clogged landfills and
destroyed the local clothing industry, makes us wonder how much worse
these people’s lives could become.

Offering few
solutions beyond a single fair-trade fashion company, “The True
Cost” — whose serene interludes compete with sickening recordings
of Black Friday shopping riots and so-called clothing haul videos —
stirs and saddens. Not least because it’s unlikely to reach the
young consumers most in need of its revelations.

I suppose it was
inevitable that after the spate of fashion brands embracing
documentaries (see Dior, Gucci, Chanel, Valentino, Gaultier), many of
which proved surprisingly effective pieces of industry propaganda, a
director would come along to put the whole thing in context.

Sort of.

That director is
Andrew Morgan, and his film is “The True Cost,” which probably
gives you some idea of the subject. It premiered in Cannes, complete
with a red carpet appearance by Livia and Colin Firth (Ms. Firth is
one of the film’s executive producers and also appears on screen,
as do — full disclosure — I, sitting next to her on a panel at a
Copenhagen Fashion Summit). It will be screened Thursday night at the
IFC Center in New York, with public showings beginning Friday, and
open later in London, Los Angeles and Tokyo. It will also be
available on iTunes and Netflix.

Viewers will get a
feature-length look at the human and environmental cost of fast
fashion, from workers in Bangladesh to cotton farmers in Texas, by
way of India, Cambodia and Fifth Avenue. It is affecting and
upsetting, and will probably make some consumers think twice about
where they buy clothes — though arguably the sort of moviegoers
attracted to a film like this already share its point of view.

Mr. Morgan, who also
provides the narration, comes at his subject with the naïveté and
enthusiasm of an amateur — he acknowledges that he didn’t think
much about his clothes beyond style and cost until he started the
film; he didn’t, that is, think about supply chain issues. This
viewpoint gives the film’s difficult and multidimensional subject
an easy-to-swallow accessibility.

But it also
oversimplifies it to an extreme and, it seems to me, undermining
degree.

Starting with the
fact that, either for brevity or impact, Mr. Morgan conflates “fast
fashion” with “fashion” writ large. And while he is condemning
the Main Street megaliths for producing in sweatshops, he slips in
photographs of high-end runway shows, implying that they also produce
in sweatshops. Yet fashion (the “almost $3 trillion industry,” as
he calls it) is not created equal, and fashion’s impacts are not
equal. Sports brands have different problems from premium brands,
many of which have their own factories, and premium brands have
different problems from mass brands.

This is not to say
that high-end fashion should not be taken to task for its failings,
but simply that to police a sector effectively, or call it out on its
shortcomings, you need to do it in an informed and realistic way.
Otherwise you create openings for companies to dismiss the charges as
irrelevant, which can taint the whole project.

(Not that any
companies, aside from those known to have an ethical agenda like
Stella McCartney and People Tree, appeared willing to speak to Mr.
Morgan, which suggests they have their own fears about this subject.
I think that was a big mistake. To begin to address the issues we
first have to know what they are, thorns and all.)

Similarly, though
lots of eye-popping statements are used, including that fashion is
the second-most-polluting industry on the planet, after oil, they are
unattributed. Because they are so powerful, this seems a surprising
omission.

I emailed Mr. Morgan
to ask about the pollution comment, and he wrote back that it came
from both the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Danish Fashion
Institute, and that the statement referred to the whole process used
by the fashion industry. “The chemical industry” — which I
mentioned in my query — “is now most often seen as being a part
of other key industries, fashion being key among them,” Mr. Morgan
wrote.

Still, “The True
Cost” would not have been hurt if Mr. Morgan had taken a slightly
more granular approach to his subject — had he, say, included the
sources of his statistics, or limited himself to the biggest, most
mass-market brands, as they touch the most people. He spent two years
making the film, visiting 13 countries, and it’s hard not to feel
in the end that he was overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. In
trying to do everything, he skirted a lot of things, including
acknowledging the shades of gray in this subject.

It’s too bad,
because doing less might actually have added up to more.

Sunday, 17 May 2015

LORD PETER WIMSEY
The Complete Collection starring Ian Carmichael. "No crust has
even been more upper, no sleuth more of a hoot." —Los Angeles
Times The acclaimed BBC dramas seen on PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre!
Here at last are all five of the original BBC adaptations of Dorothy
L. Sayers’ crime thrillers featuring Ian Carmichael as the
brilliant aristocratic sleuth. Hailed by critics as one of the finest
mystery series ever filmed, it was so successful on PBS’
Masterpiece Theatre that it single-handedly inspired the spin-off
Mystery! Running at least three hours each, these dramas do full
justice to Sayers’ vivid characters and elegant 1920s settings. THE
MYSTERIES: Clouds of Witness, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club,
Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors, Five Red Herrings DVD
SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE exclusive Ian Carmichael interviews,
filmographies, interactive trivia and Dorothy L. Sayers materials.

Ian Carmichael
starred as Wimsey in radio adaptations of the novels made by the BBC,
all of which have been available on cassette and CD from the BBC
Radio Collection. In the original series, which ran on Radio 4 from
1973–83, no adaptation was made of the seminal Gaudy Night, perhaps
because the leading character in this novel is Harriet and not Peter;
this was corrected in 2005 when a version specially recorded for the
BBC Radio Collection was released starring Carmichael and Joanna
David. The CD also includes a panel discussion on the novel, the
major participants in which are P. D. James and Jill Paton Walsh.
Gaudy Night was released as an unabridged audio book read by Ian
Carmichael in 1993.

In How I Came to
Invent the Character of Lord Peter Wimsey, Sayers wrote:

Lord Peter's large
income... I deliberately gave him... After all it cost me nothing
and at the time I was particularly hard up and it gave me pleasure
to spend his fortune for him. When I was dissatisfied with my single
unfurnished room I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly. When
my cheap rug got a hole in it, I ordered him an Aubusson carpet.
When I had no money to pay my bus fare I presented him with a
Daimler double-six, upholstered in a style of sober magnificence,
and when I felt dull I let him drive it. I can heartily recommend
this inexpensive way of furnishing to all who are discontented with
their incomes. It relieves the mind and does no harm to anybody.

“Lord Peter Wimsey
burst upon the world of detective fiction with an explosive "Oh,
damn!" and continued to engage readers in eleven novels and two
sets of short stories; the final novel ended with a very different
"Oh, damn!". Sayers once commented that Lord Peter was a
mixture of Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster, which is most evident in
the first five novels. However, it is evident through Lord Peter's
development as a rounded character that he existed in Sayers's mind
as a living, breathing, fully human being. Sayers introduced
detective novelist Harriet Vane in Strong Poison. Sayers remarked
more than once that she had developed the "husky voiced,
dark-eyed" Harriet to put an end to Lord Peter via matrimony.
But in the course of writing Gaudy Night, Sayers imbued Lord Peter
and Harriet with so much life that she was never able, as she put it,
to "see Lord Peter exit the stage".

Sayers did not
content herself with writing pure detective stories; she explored the
difficulties of First World War veterans in The Unpleasantness at the
Bellona Club, discussed the ethics of advertising in Murder Must
Advertise, and advocated women's education (then a controversial
subject) and role in society in Gaudy Night. In Gaudy Night, Miss
Barton writes a book attacking the Nazi doctrine of Kinder, Kirche,
Küche, which restricted women's roles to family activities, and in
many ways the whole of Gaudy Night can be read as an attack on Nazi
social doctrine. The book has been described as "the first
feminist mystery novel."

Sayers's Christian
and academic interests are also apparent in her detective series. In
The Nine Tailors, one of her most well-known detective novels, the
plot unfolds largely in and around an old church dating back to the
Middle Ages. Change ringing of bells also forms an important part of
the novel. In Have His Carcase, the Playfair cipher and the
principles of cryptanalysis are explained. Her short story Absolutely
Elsewhere refers to the fact that (in the language of modern physics)
the only perfect alibi for a crime is to be outside its light cone,
while The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will contains a
literary crossword puzzle.

Sayers also wrote a
number of short stories about Montague Egg, a wine salesman who
solves mysteries.

“Lord Peter begins
his hobby of investigation by recovering The Attenbury Emeralds in
1921. He also becomes good friends with Scotland Yard detective
Charles Parker, a sergeant in 1921 who eventually rises to the rank
of Commander. Bunter, a man of many talents himself, not least
photography, often proves instrumental in Peter's investigations.
However, Wimsey is not entirely well. At the end of the investigation
in Whose Body? (1923) he hallucinates that he is back in the
trenches. He soon recovers his senses and goes on a long holiday.

The next year, he
travels (in Clouds of Witness, 1926) to the fictional Riddlesdale in
North Yorkshire to assist his older brother Gerald, who has been
accused of murdering Captain Denis Cathcart, their sister's fiancé.
As Gerald is the Duke of Denver, he is tried by the entire House of
Lords, as required by the law at that time, to much scandal and the
distress of his wife Helen. Their sister, Lady Mary, also falls under
suspicion. Lord Peter clears the Duke and Lady Mary, to whom Parker
is attracted.

As a result of the
slaughter of men in the First World War, there was in the UK a
considerable imbalance between the sexes. It is not exactly known
when Wimsey recruited Miss Climpson to run an undercover employment
agency for women, a means to garner information from the otherwise
inaccessible world of spinsters and widows, but it is prior to
Unnatural Death (1927), in which Miss Climpson assists Wimsey's
investigation of the suspicious death of an elderly cancer patient.

As recounted in the
short story "The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba",
in December 1927 Wimsey fakes his own death, supposedly while hunting
big game in Tanganyika, to penetrate and break up a particularly
dangerous and well-organised criminal gang. Only Wimsey's mother and
sister, the loyal Bunter and Inspector Parker know he is still alive.
Emerging victorious after more than a year masquerading as "the
disgruntled sacked servant Rogers", Wimsey remarks that "We
shall have an awful time with the lawyers, proving that I am me."
In fact, he returns smoothly to his old life, and the interlude is
never referred to in later books.

During the 1920s,
Wimsey has affairs with various women, which are the subject of much
gossip in Britain and Europe. This part of his life remains hazy: it
is hardly ever mentioned in the books set in the same period; most of
the scanty information on the subject is given in flashbacks from
later times, after he meets Harriet Vane and relations with other
women become a closed chapter. In Busman's Honeymoon Wimsey
facetiously refers to a gentleman's duty "to remember whom he
had taken to bed" so as not to embarrass his bedmate by calling
her by the wrong name.

There are several
references to a relationship with a famous Viennese opera singer, and
Bunter – who evidently was involved with this, as with other parts
of his master's life – recalls Wimsey being very angry with a
French mistress who mistreated her own servant. The only one of
Wimsey's earlier women to appear in person is the artist Marjorie
Phelps, who plays an important role in The Unpleasantness at the
Bellona Club. She has known Wimsey for years and is attracted to him,
though it is not explicitly stated whether they were lovers. Wimsey
likes her, respects her, and enjoys her company – but that isn't
enough. In Strong Poison, she is the first person other than Wimsey
himself to realise that he has fallen in love with Harriet.

In Strong Poison
Lord Peter encounters Harriet Vane, a cerebral, Oxford-educated
mystery writer, while she is on trial for the murder of her former
lover. He falls in love with her at first sight. Wimsey saves her
from the gallows, but she believes that gratitude is not a good
foundation for marriage, and politely but firmly declines his
frequent proposals. Lord Peter encourages his friend and foil, Chief
Inspector Charles Parker, to propose to his sister, Lady Mary Wimsey,
despite the great difference in their rank and wealth. They marry and
have a son, named Charles Peter ("Peterkin"), and a
daughter, Mary Lucasta.

While on a fishing
holiday in Scotland, Wimsey instigates and takes part in the
investigation of the murder of an artist, related in Five Red
Herrings. Despite the rejection of his marriage proposal, he
continues to court Miss Vane. In Have His Carcase, he finds Harriet
is not in London, but learns from a reporter that she has discovered
a corpse while on a walking holiday on England's south coast. Wimsey
is at her hotel the next morning. He not only investigates the death
and offers proposals of marriage, but also acts as Harriet's patron
and protector from press and police. Despite a prickly relationship,
they work together to identify the murderer.

Back in London,
Wimsey goes undercover as "Death Bredon" at an advertising
firm, working as a copywriter (Murder Must Advertise). Bredon is
framed for murder, leading Charles Parker to "arrest"
Bredon for murder in front of numerous witnesses. To distinguish
Death Bredon from Lord Peter Wimsey, Parker smuggles Wimsey out of
the police station and urges him to get into the papers. Accordingly
Wimsey accompanies "a Royal personage" to a public event,
leading the press to carry pictures of both "Bredon" and
Wimsey. In 1934 Wimsey in (The Nine Tailors) must unravel a
20-year-old case of missing jewels; an unknown corpse; a missing
World War I soldier believed alive; a murderous escaped convict
believed dead and a mysterious code concerning church bells.

By 1935 Lord Peter
is in continental Europe, acting as an unofficial attaché to the
British Foreign Office. Harriet Vane contacts him about a problem she
has been asked to investigate in her college at Oxford (Gaudy Night).
At the end of their investigation, Vane finally accepts Wimsey's
proposal of marriage.

The couple marry on
8 October 1935, at St. Cross Church, Holywell Street, Oxford, as
depicted in the opening collection of letters and diary entries in
Busman's Honeymoon. The Wimseys honeymoon at Talboys, a house in east
Hertfordshire near where Harriet had lived as a child, that Peter has
bought for her as a wedding present. There they find the body of the
previous owner, and spend their honeymoon solving the case, thus
having the eponymous "Busman's Honeymoon".

Over the next five
years, according to Sayers' short stories, the Wimseys have three
sons: Bredon Delagardie Peter Wimsey (born in October 1936 in the
story "The Haunted Policeman"); Roger Wimsey (born 1938),
and Paul Wimsey (born 1940). However, according to the wartime
publications of The Wimsey Papers, published in The Spectator, the
second son was called Paul. It may be presumed that Paul is named
after Lord Peter's maternal uncle Paul Delagardie. "Roger"
is an ancestral Wimsey name. Sayers told friends orally that Harriet
and Peter were to eventually have five children in all.

In the final Wimsey
story, the 1942 short story "Talboys", Peter and Harriet
are enjoying rural domestic bliss with their three sons when Bredon,
their first-born, is accused of the theft of prize peaches from the
neighbour's tree. Peter and the accused set off to investigate and,
of course, prove Bredon's innocence.”

Mute colour film
shot by an amateur cinematographer of the construction of
prefabricated housing in post-war London. The film has inter-titles
throughout.

The film opens with
a shot of St Paul's Cathedral, followed by a sign at the base of
Nelson's Column reading 'The time of destruction is ended ... the era
of reconstruction begins. H.M. the King". Another sign reads
'Save for reconstruction'. The demolition of a bomb-damaged building.
Intertitles introduce the construction of Orlit Houses; a sign
on-site reads 'Ministry of Works. Experimental Permanent Houses.
Poplar Site'. The construction of the houses are shown from
constructing the concrete frames through to the finished dwellings. A
sign on-site reads 'Richard Costain Limited London SW1'. Mr George
Tomlinson and Mr Charles Key, the Minister of Works open the first
house in February 1946, watched by crowds of on-lookers. Detailed
shots of the interior of one of the houses.

The Film and Video
Archive of the Imperial War Museum was established in 1920, making it
one of the first film archives in the world. It holds some 120
million feet of film and 6,500 house of video tape. A large
proportion of material has been transferred to the Museum from the
armed Services and other public bodies as the Archive is the official
repository for these films.

More information
about this film can be found via the Film and Video section of the
Imperial War Museums on-line catalogue: www.iwmcollections.org.uk

A former show jumper
who stole antiques and art including a Picasso sketch and Ben
Nicholson painting from a wealthy countess while working as her
housekeeper has been jailed for three years.

Kim Roberts, 59, was
told by a judge that her offences against Lady Bathurst were “greedy
and calculated”.

Roberts admitted
stealing from Bathurst’s homes in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, and
south-west London. She also admitted taking a Volvo car from another
former employer, the interior designer Emily Olympitis.

In addition she
pleaded guilty to giving false details to employment agency Holland
Park Staffing, which supplies butlers and nannies, so that previous
convictions for dishonesty would not be discovered.

Her barrister, Simon
Roberts, pleaded for leniency at Gloucester crown court saying she
had had a “disastrous life” and was terrified of going to prison
because she looked after her disabled son.

He pointed out that
the artwork had not even been missed until she came to sell it. But
Judge William Hart said the law was there to protect everyone,
“whether prince or pauper”.

Ian Dixey,
prosecuting, said Kim Roberts worked for a little under a month as a
housekeeper for Bathurst in the spring of 2013.

Soon after she left,
Roberts had a Nicholson painting valued. She was told it was worth
£200,000, but dealers she spoke to were suspicious about where she
had got it from. A gallery owner recognised it as belonging to
Bathurst and contacted her.

Bathurst did not
realise it was missing as it had been kept in a study, covered up. It
was only then that she realised other property, including the Picasso
sketch, were missing.

Police were called
in and Roberts was arrested when she arrived at the Lansdowne Club in
Mayfair, London, where she had arranged to meet a gallery owner
hoping to sell the Nicholson painting.

Dixey said: “As Ms
Roberts arrived at the club she was arrested. She was searched and
items found in her handbag included a set of keys, which were to Lady
Bathurst’s London flat.

“Her [Roberts’]
home in Colyton [in Devon] was then searched and officers could
immediately see there were a large number of items of value in the
property. There were more than 50 items, mainly antique silver and
things of that sort.

“When the
defendant was interviewed she said that the Ben Nicholson painting
and the Picasso sketch had in effect been given to her and that she
was entitled to sell them.”

Roberts claimed that
other items in her possession – such as a box with Bathurst’s
name written on it – had been dumped. Items found had been taken
from both Bathurst’s Gloucestershire and London homes.

Later police found
that the car was driving had false number plates. It had been stolen
from Olympitis in 2012.

Dixey said Roberts’
fraud against Holland Park Staffing involved changing the 6 in her
date of birth 1956 on her driving licence to 8. This was clearly
because she had a criminal record that she did not want to be
discovered, he said.

The prosecutor said
Roberts had been convicted of offences including deception,
shoplifting and forgery in the late 1980s and 90s.

He told the court it
was impossible to put a valuation on what she had stolen. “But it
was in breach of trust and there were clearly items of sentimental
value as well as high material value,” he said. “She worked for
very wealthy people who perhaps did not miss things in the way that
others might have done.”

Simon Burns, for
Roberts, said she was “extremely contrite” but argued that it had
not been ”elaborate or complicated” offending.

He told the court
the paintings stolen would “not immediately have been missed”
because they were “not on the walls being appreciated”.

The Picasso sketch,
he said, was a “very simple’” one and not worth more than
£100,000. The Nicholson still life from 1945 was worth between
£80,000 and £120,000, he said.

Roberts’
motivation was that she had “fallen from her very comfortable
position that she once enjoyed a long time ago”, Burns continued.

“She had been
married comfortably and was looked after. But that marriage broke
down. She has suffered from depression since 1987. The partners and
relationships she has had have all failed. She has had what is quoted
in the medical paperwork as a disastrous life.

“She suffered a
severe road traffic accident which resulted in her contracting a
brain tumour in 2001. The only thing she could do was domestic work.
She became a housekeeper. It was not a career of choice.

“She was a single
mum with a son who required constant care. He is 29 and she cares for
him. He functions at the level of a 15-year-old and is on constant
medication. She is extremely anxious about him and who is going to
look after him if she is in prison. She had fallen on hard times and
resorted to stealing to save herself from financial destitution.

“A lot of people
speak highly of her. She has looked after a number of families. She
was a horsewoman who competed as a show jumper at Hickstead. All that
has been lost.”

Sentencing Roberts,
the judge said “These were premeditated offences by you as an
employee with the clearest intention of selling the items on. There
is a greedy and calculated nature to your offending. What you did in
effect was to repay your employer’s trust with avarice and
dishonesty.

“Lady Bathurst is
a wealthy woman from a wealthy family and you no doubt thought she
could easily bear the loss, even if she did discover it. The fact she
is wealthy is not a mitigating factor. The criminal justice system
should protect all, whether prince or pauper.”

He praised the
“integrity and professionalism” of the art dealers involved in
the case and said it was thanks to their honesty that all the stolen
property Roberts tried to sell was recovered.

Allen Christopher
Bertram Bathurst, 9th Earl Bathurst (born 11 March 1961), known as
Lord Apsley till 2011, is a British peer and conservationist.

Born on 11 March
1961 as the eldest son of Henry Bathurst, 8th Earl Bathurst and
Judith Mary Nelson, he lives with his wife Sara at Cirencester Park,
the Bathurst family seat. With the death of his father on 16 October
2011, he became the 9th Earl Bathurst, of Bathurst in the County of
Sussex (Great Britain, let. pat. 27 Aug 1772), 9th Baron Bathurst, of
Battlesden in the County of Bedford (Great Britain, let. pat. 1 Jan
1712), and the 8th Baron Apsley, of Apsley in the County of Sussex
(Great Britain, let. pat. 24 Jan 1771).

Bathurst married
first Hilary George, 2nd daughter of John F. George on 31 May 1986.
They divorced in 1994. With her he has two children, a son and a
daughter:

Benjamin George
Henry Bathurst, Lord Apsley (born 6 March 1990)

Lady Rosie Meriel
Lilias Bathurst (born 1992)

On 5 June 1996, he
married secondly Sara Chapman, currently named The Countess Bathurst,
daughter of Christopher and Marguerite Chapman of Ilminster,
Somerset.

Bathurst runs the
Bathurst Estate, covering some 15,500 acres of countryside. It
includes much of the village of Sapperton and Coates, including
Pinbury Park, and lays claim to the principal source of the River
Thames. Within the estate is the famous Ivy Lodge polo ground,
Cirencester Park Polo Club being founded in 1894, making it the
oldest playing ground in the United Kingdom. He also runs Cirencester
Park Farms which farms 4,500 acres of arable crops, partially
organic, and a herd of Gloucester Cattle.

As a
conservationist, he has campaigned to preserve the rural countryside
and various historic buildings. Most notably The Earl and Countess,
as Lord and Lady Apsley, made headline news when they tried to save
an historic building in The Cattle Market in Cirencester, built by
the 6th Earl Bathurst for the Mansion's old Kitchen Garden. When they
discovered it was to be demolished by the County Council to make way
for a Leisure Centre, they threatened to chain themselves to the
building to prevent the demolition going ahead. The problem was
eventually solved when Bathurst negotiated with the demolition
company to buy back the building and it was removed, brick by brick
to the family estate.

Bathurst is a
President of Cirencester Housing and Marshall of the St Lawrence
Hospital Trust. He is also the founding Director of the annual
Cotswold Show, held every July on the Bathurst Estate and a Patron of
the Cotswolds Museum Trust. He is President of The Cirencester
Hospital League of Friends, President of Cirencester Band, President
of The Cirencester Male Voice Choir, Steward of The Cirencester
Society in London, Patron of The Cirencester Cricket Club, and
President of Cirencester Park Polo Club.

Bathurst is involved
in the National Farmers Union. He is President of the Gloucestershire
Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG), a governor of the Royal
Agricultural University, past President of the Three Counties
Agricultural Society and Director of the Gloucestershire Farming
Trust.

Cirencester Park is
a country house in the parish of Cirencester in Gloucestershire,
England, and is the seat of the Bathurst family, Earls Bathurst. It
is a Grade II* listed building.

Allen Bathurst, the
first Earl Bathurst (1684–1775), inherited the estate on the death
of his father, Sir Benjamin Bathurst, in 1704. He was a Tory Member
of Parliament and statesman who from 1714 devoted himself to
rebuilding the house formerly known as Oakley Grove, which probably
stands on the site of Cirencester Castle, and laying out the famous
parkland.

In 1716 Bathurst
acquired the extensive estate of Sapperton from the Atkyns family,
including Oakley Wood, and went on to plant one of the finest
landscape gardens in England, complete with park buildings, walks,
seats, grottoes and ruins. They include Alfred’s Hall, now taken to
be the earliest recorded Gothick garden building in England, which is
also a grade II* listed building.

Allen Bathurst was
raised to the peerage as a baron in 1711 and an earl in 1772, and was
a patron of art and literature no less than a statesman. The poet
Alexander Pope was a frequent visitor to Cirencester House; he
advised on the lay-out of the gardens and designed the building known
as Pope's Seat in the park, which commands a splendid view of woods
and avenues. Jonathan Swift was another appreciative visitor.

The house contains
portraits by Lawrence, Gainsborough, Romney, Lely, Reynolds, Hoppner,
Kneller and many others, and a set of giant marble columns carrying
busts, which are genuine antiques, collected in Italy by Lord Apsley,
the son of the third earl, at the time of the Congress of Vienna in
1814.

There were additions
to the house by Sir Robert Smirke about 1830.

Subsequent earls
were patrons of the Arts and Crafts movement, when Ernest Gimson and
the Barnsley brothers, Sidney and Ernest, settled at Pinbury Park on
the Cirencester estate in 1894. Norman Jewson joined them in 1907,
and describes his life as a student of Gimson in Sapperton in his
classic memoir, By Chance I did Rove (1952).

The estate includes
much of the villages of Sapperton and Coates, including Pinbury Park,
and lays claim to containing the principal source of the River
Thames.[citation needed]

Apsley House, at
Hyde Park in London, was built for Lord Apsley, later the third earl
Bathurst, Lord Chancellor, by the architect, Robert Adam. In 1807 the
house was purchased by Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, who
in 1817 sold it to his famous brother, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of
Wellington (who presented his portrait, today still in Cirencester
House).

The house has the
tallest yew hedge in Britain. The semi-circular hedge, which is 33
feet wide and 150 yards long, is believed to have been planted in
about 1710. The tonne of clippings produced by its annual trimming
are sold to pharmaceutical companies who use extracts as a key
ingredient of Docetaxel, a chemotherapy drug used to treat breast,
ovarian and lung cancer.

7th Earl Bathurst

The
8th Earl Bathurst

The 8th Earl
Bathurst, who died on October 16 aged 84, was a junior Conservative
minister at the Home Office and Lord-in-Waiting to the Queen, but his
public offices never matched his private antics for originality and
spice.

"Barmy"
Bathurst, as he was known, inherited the earldom and Cirencester Park
in Gloucestershire from his grandfather, the 7th Earl, in 1943, the
year after his father, Lord Apsley, DSO, MC, MP, had been killed, and
was a keen countryman who rode hard to hounds, as well as a just and
jovial landlord.

He followed in the
footsteps of the 1st Earl, – a former Tory MP for Cirencester and
friend of Pope, Swift and Congreve who afforested 3,000 acres of the
estate in 1720 – by becoming a keen forester himself and President
of the Royal Forestry Society as well as Councillor for the Timber
Growers' Association.

An apiarist and an
able farmer, Bathurst was also the owner of "Jim" and
"Joe", the last working oxen in this country. He ran
Cirencester Park Polo Club and was active in local affairs – it was
his job, among others, to hand out the Bledisloe Trophies to
well-kept Cotswold villages. He was also a governor at the Royal
Agricultural College for many years.

Henry Allen John
Bathurst was born on May 1 1927 the eldest son of Allen Bathurst,
Lord Apsley, and his wife Violet. He was educated at Eton College and
Christ Church, Oxford. In 1948 he joined the military and served as a
lieutenant in the 10th Royal Hussars and as a captain in the Royal
Gloucestershire Hussars (TA).

In 1957 Bathurst
became honorary secretary of the Agricultural Committee in the House
of Lords and a Lord-in-Waiting to the Queen. He was Chancellor of the
Primrose League from 1959 to 1961 as well, and, during this time, at
was President of the Gloucestershire Branch of the Council for the
Protection of Rural England.

His political career
was short-lived, however, and reached its peak when he was appointed
Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office in
1961, only to be discharged the following year by Harold Macmillan in
the "night of the long knives".

Thereafter, Bathurst
retired to the family seat, though his work for the Tory Party
continued under other guises: in 1968, to raise funds for the Party,
he sold a 2nd Century Samian cup that had been found among Roman
ruins on the estate in 1891.

Bathurst's duties at
Cirencester Park included riding as Master of the Valley of The White
Horse Hounds, the Gloucestershire pack kept by his family since the
1830s. He cut a dashing figure on a horse, and became the first
English peer to ride a Russian horse to hounds, so keen was he to
introduce Russian-bred horses to the local hunting fraternity.

In 1965, however, in
order reduce costs for both hunts, he merged his own twenty couple
with the local Vale of The White Horse pack. But he diversified into
other equestrian pursuits, founding Cirencester Park Polo Club –
venue of the famous chukka which saw the Prince of Wales come a
cropper mid-swing and break his arm.

Scandal struck in
the Eighties when, twice, (in 1982 and 1988), plantations of cannabis
and opium poppies were found to be growing within the Park walls,
tended by local opportunists who were later jailed. Bathurst
weathered the ensuing press attention with the same grace as he
employed in 1989, when he lost his driving licence for 15 months
after a four-hour lunchtime "jolly" with friends.

In 1988 Bathurst had
moved to a farmhouse on the estate to make way for Lord Apsley, his
son and heir, yet he remained involved in the running of things. In
2003, driving through the Park on his way home from a polo match, his
Landrover was overtaken on the grass verge by a Volkswagen Golf
travelling at 40 to 50mph. Roused to heights of fury by this flagrant
breach of the estate's 20mph speed limit, the 76-year-old Earl gave
chase, flashing his lights, sounding his horn and engaging in
off-road manoeuvres to try and get the offender to stop. But it was
the Earl himself who was forced to stop – by the security team
protecting Prince William, the car's driver.

Although Clarence
House issued an apology, the Earl remained unrepentant: "There
are rules in the polo club about driving on the estate, and people
have to stick to them", he told an interviewer. "I don't
care who it is, royalty or not – speeding is not allowed on my
estate. If I was to drive like that in Windsor Park, I'd end up in
the Tower." He did not recognise the Prince, he explained,
observing that he "thought he was some young yob in a beat-up
car".

Bathurst was
Chairman of the Gloucestershire branch of the Country Landowners'
Association from 1968 to 1971 and a Deputy Lieutenant for
Gloucestershire from 1960 to 1986.

He married first, in
1959, Judith Nelson; they had two sons and one daughter. The marriage
was dissolved in 1977 and the following year he married, secondly,
Gloria, widow of David Rutherston.

His son Allen
Christopher Bertram Bathurst, Lord Apsley, born in 1961, succeeds to
the Earldom.

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

A codpiece is
a covering flap or pouch that attaches to the front of the crotch of men's
trousers and usually accentuates the genital area. It was held closed by string
ties, buttons, or other methods. It was an important item of European clothing
in the 15th and 16th centuries

As time
passed, codpieces became shaped and padded to emphasize rather than to conceal,
reaching their peak of size and decoration in the 1540s before falling out of
use by the 1590s. Scholars have noted that the appearance of Renaissance
codpiece was coincident with aggressive spread of syphilis in the early 16th
century, and suggest that it may have first served to allow extra room in the
clothing for bandages or other dressings for the afflicted male member.

Armor of
the 16th century followed civilian fashion, and for a time armored codpieces
were a prominent addition to the best full harnesses. A few of these are on
display in museums today: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York City has one, as does the Higgins Armory in Worcester,
Massachusetts; the armor of Henry VIII in the Tower of London has a codpiece. In later periods,
the codpiece became an object of the derision showered on outlandish fashions.
Renaissance humorist François Rabelais jokingly refers to a book titled On the
Dignity of Codpieces in the foreword to his book The Histories of Gargantua and
Pantagruel.

They may
have been the crowning glory for any right-thinking Tudor gentleman, but it
appears the traditional codpiece may be a little too much for American
television viewers.

The stars
of Wolf Hall, the BBC’s new period drama based on the novels of Hilary Mantel,
have disclosed they have been issued with “smaller”-than average codpieces, out
of respect for viewers' sensibilities.

Mark
Rylance, who stars as Thomas Cromwell in the forthcoming BBC series, said
programme-makers had decided on “very small codpieces” which had to be “tucked
away”.

He
suggested allowances had been made amid concerns about the taste of modern
audiences, particularly in America,
who “may not know exactly what’s going on down there”.

It is one
of few concessions permitted by programme-makers, who have otherwise gone to
remarkable lengths to ensure historical accuracy, including trips to
Shakespeare’s Globe to learn sword-fighting, lessons in etiquette and bowing,
and a comprehensive study on spoons.

Mantel has
given her seal of approval to the production, issuing a statement of glowing
praise for how it has been adapted on screen.

Saying she
was pleased programme-makers had resisted the temptation to “patronise” the
Tudors to make them “cute”, she said: “My expectations were high and have been
exceeded.”

When asked
about the costumes in a Q&A to launch the BBC show, alongside actors Damian
Lewis and Claire Foy, Rylance said they “did take a while to put on” but
praised the overall effect.

“I think
the codpieces are too small,” he added. “I think it was a direction from our
American producers PBS [the US
public service broadcaster] – they like very small codpieces which always
seemed to be tucked away.”

When asked
to clarify, he said: “I wasn’t personally disappointed by the codpieces: I’m a
little more used to them than other people from being at the Globe for ten
years.

“But I can
see for modern audiences, perhaps more in America, they may not know exactly
what’s going on down there.”

Lewis, who
plays Henry VIII, hinted there had been some on-set “giggling” over the matter,
with the curtain-like effect of the male costumes finally making it a moot
point.

“Codpieces
at the time in the Tudor period were a symbol of virility and actually men of
the court were encouraged to wear prominent cod pieces,” he said. “It was a
symbol of your virility, your derring-do, your sense of adventure.

“They were
encouraged, it was a fashion, and Henry liked them.”

Colin
Callender, the executive producer, later clarified there had been “no hidden
codpiece memo” handed down by PBS or the BBC.

Foy, who
plays Anne Boleyn, added costumes had been created and worn with meticulous
detail, with no zips or Velcro added for ease and constant vigilance about
whether everyone on set had the correct attire.

As well as
teaching the cast to swordfight and being taught the difference between the
bows suitable for Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, programme-makers also paid
particular attention to who would be joining in the relatively new fashion for
using a spoon.

“We had to
make a decision on whether Thomas More was a spoon kind of guy,” Peter
Kosminsky, the director, said. “Anne Boleyn went for spoons in a big way.”

The team
relied heavily on the scholarship of Hilary Mantel, who spent five years
researching the Tudor court before writing the Man Booker Prize-winning novels.

Peter
Straughan, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter, said had known “absolutely
nothing” about Tudor history beforehand, joking he had kept a copy of the
“Dummies Guide to Elizabethans” on his desk to help him along.

Callender
added he hoped the drama would perfectly suit modern audiences, who have
already enjoyed high-tension programmes such as Breaking Bad.

Referring
to Cromwell’s mixed reputation, he said: “Modern audiences are fascinated by
characters that cross moral lines, trapped between doing the right thing and
surviving.”

Wolf Hall,
a six-part series covering the first two novels of Mantel’s trilogy, is due for
broadcast on BBC One in January.

So says
Colin Callendar, executive producer of the upcoming BBC Two drama series Wolf
Hall, denying claims that the size of his stars’ codpieces were reduced beyond
the point of historical accuracy to avoid offending or baffling an American
audience.

Actor
Damian Lewis did indeed describe the black velvet codpiece that came with his
costume as Henry VIII as a ‘little dinky one.’
But it was Mark Rylance, playing Thomas Cromwell himself, who provided a
possible reason why, claiming that ‘modern audiences, perhaps more in America’ might
‘not know exactly what’s going on down there.’

So what
exactly is this controversial garment?
The codpiece is buttoned, or tied with strings, to a man’s
breeches. It takes its name from the
word ‘cod’, middle English for both ‘bag’ and ‘scrotum’, and arose because
medieval men wore hose – essentially, very long socks – beneath their doublets,
and nothing else in the way of underwear.

When the
fourteenth-century fashion for very short doublets emerged, the codpiece was invented
to cover up the gap at the top of those hose.
If you believe ‘the Parson’ in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, it was a
much-needed innovation. He disliked the
short doublets of his day because ‘Alas! Some of them show the very boss of
their penis and the horrible pushed-out testicles that look like the malady of
hernia’.

Originally
just a triangle of cloth, the codpiece became more substantial and more
decorative as time went on, until its decline in the late sixteenth century.

The
codpiece, of course, forms part of the picture of Henry VIII that we all carry
round in our heads. In the portraits
after Hans Holbein the Younger, Henry’s enormous codpiece emphasizes his
virility, and hence his capacity for providing England with heirs to the throne. It forms the very centerpiece of Holbein’s
drawing (‘The Whitehall
Cartoon’) that gives us Henry’s definitive image.

None of
Henry’s fabric codpieces survive, but the suit of his 1540 armour displayed at
the Tower of London also has an enormous codpiece in
metal, and its size suggests that Holbein was not exaggerating. Female visitors to the Tower used to stick
pins into its lining in the hope that this would increase their own fertility.

Codpieces
also functioned a useful little purse for storing precious items like coins, or
jewels, and tradition claims this as the origin of the expression ‘a man’s
family jewels.’

They are
garments that tend to arouse wonder and disbelief in post-Tudor viewers, so
much so that the Museum
of London has a whole
drawer of codpieces that were catalogued, by a bashful Victorian curator, as
‘shoulder pads’.

But none of
them were quite as big as the one worn by Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder,
in his first, late-medieval, incarnation.
For his installation as Archbishop of Canterbury, Blackadder decides to
wear his best and biggest codpiece.

Tuesday, 5 May 2015

“Traditionally,
as the name suggests, a Hacking Jacket was a tweed jacket worn for riding. The
key features of today’s Hacking Jackets remain unchanged and all owe their
roots to maintaining a stylish appearance in the saddle.

The lapels
on a Hacking Jacket meet mid-chest, the jacket is lightly tailored at the waist
and there are three buttons. The origins of these features are functional and
stylistic. All contribute to a secure, semi-fitted jacket that allows for free
movement in the saddle. A longer lapel and any less than three buttons, and the
jacket would be likely to gape.

A Hacking
Jacket is traditionally cut a little longer, with a long single vent at the
back. Again this is designed to create a more refined silhouette in the saddle.
The single vent opens over the saddleback and the front panels sit neatly on
the thigh. For the contemporary wearer the effect is equally flattering,
creating as it does an elongated, elegant line.

The Hacking
Jacket

The pockets
are slanted on a Hacking Jacket to make it easier for a rider to access them in
a seated position. Today they retain this heritage feature and you will also
find an additional ticket pocket on a Hacking Jacket, just above the right
pocket and slightly smaller in size.”(…)